Jesse's Story
by Matrix-Twin1
Summary: This is a companion fic to Apoc's story by Twin2Adrian, please read that too! A girl named Jesse is forced into becoming an assassin
1. Jesse

(Disclaimer: So far, I own pretty much everything in this, but if you see a Matrix character, or someone from Apoc's Story, it's not mine. Jesse is, though.)  
  
Jesse's Story  
  
St. Petersburg, Russia, Present date.   
  
"Jesse! Jesse, are you paying any attention to what I'm saying?!"  
  
Jesse Rheinhertz jumped a good six inches, half spun to face the speaker, and yelped. After blushing to the roots of her red-blonde hair, she sighed. She was always doing stupid, nervous things like that, much to her mother's consternation. Someone tittered behind her, and she heard several people not even bothering to keep their voices down. No one ever did.  
  
"Oh, my, GOD! She is, like, such a freak!"  
  
"Can't she ever even attempt to act normal?"  
  
"Jesse! What did I just say? Tell the class." That was Ms. Smith, the history teacher, the one in charge of this traveling nightmare.  
  
So, she wanted to play this puerile teacher's game. Without taking her eyes off the weird men she had been watching, Jesse repeated word for word what Ms. Smith had just said, including her mild Texan accent. "Now, class... Jesse! Now, class, this is a very important part of ... History! That we are enjoying now. I'm sure we should all thank Mr., er, our guide. Yes."  
  
"Well! I see that you were listening, Jesse, but I have had more than enough of your disrespectful attitude! You are confined to the hotel for the rest of today, while the rest of us explore this, this, magnificent, city." She drew out the word magnificent until it sounded as if it would break in the chilly air.  
  
But there it was. Us. That wonderful state of being that Jesse was sure she could never attain. But as to being confined to the hotel room, Jesse couldn't have cared less. She hadn't wanted to come on this trip anyway. Not that it was any different than school, but at least there she had her own room. Here, the other girls from Crystal Woods Irish Boarding Academy were all around her, always. She could just hear her parents preparing to banish her to Siberia (well, Russia, but she thought it would sound more romantic that way. If she had had anyone to tell). First her nervous, excitable father:  
  
"N-now, dear... We worry that you... don't spend enough time with your... peers. So, we thought you might enjoy this trip... Hmmm?" His motto, she had always thought, was "Can't we all just get along? Or if we don't, can't we at least pretend?" She hated that about him, his constant fakeness. She had thought, when she was little, that if he ever dropped his veil of fantasy his whole body might disintegrate, leaving only a musty pile of dust. Or a dusty pile of must she thought, amused by her little rhyme. Musty pile of dust, dusty pile of must. She shook herself. She was getting stupid. She bent her thoughts back. Banishing. Right.  
  
Her mother was again different, but no realer or happier. Her distortion of reality, however, was based on needing to be part of the "in" group. Having inherited a huge estate, money and possessions, she was able to fill this need every minute, without having to be distracted by such trivial things as work. Her comment on the trip: "No, no no! No ifs, ands or but from you, young lady! You're going on this trip, whether you want to or not. But of course you do! It's a great opportunity for you to spend time with all your friends, and I've always wanted to see St. Petersburg. You can tell us everything! And take lots of pictures of you and your friends, and buy all the latest Russian fashions!" Jesse wouldn't have minded her mother's craziness quite so much if she hadn't also insisted on dragging Jesse into it, pretending that she ha friends.  
  
So, one way or another, here she was. Stuck in Russia. For a whole month. As she walked back to the hotel, alone, she decided to do a little exploring of her own. She would follow the weird men she had been watching. There were two of them, and they wore suits covered by long, expensive coats. They also had reflective glasses, and when they exposed their profiles she could see their eyes flicking nervously. Well, she thought, 'maybe this trip will be interesting after all...'  
  
After pursuing them for a while, it became evident that they, too, were following someone, and that they were concentrating so hard on their target that they hadn't even noticed the thin, red-haired eighteen-year-old following them. She trailed them all the way to an old, dingy apartment building. She almost lost them as she waited under the stairs, but followed the sounds of their voices. They were speaking loudly, in Russian, with no attempt to keep their voices down. What were they saying? Her Russian wasn't very good, she could only make out a few words. Something about "Late...cash...boss".   
  
It made no sense to her, and she had just turned to go when she heard another, quieter voice. It sounded as if it was pleading, and it was a man. He sounded terrified. She had hardly had time to register this, when... A gun shot shattered the moment into a million pieces. She tried to suppress her scream, but she still gasped. She ran, and sobbed, and ran, all the way back to the hotel. The men made no attempt to follow her, they were so shocked at seeing her. But they got a good look at her uniform, and her hair...  
  
Jesse, bolting past the startled doorman, raced up to the room, locked the door, and collapsed on the bed. It was four hours later that the rest of her class arrived, and she woke up to see Ms. Smith standing over her. A few of the others wore looks of genuine concern for her desperate, disheveled appearance, but far more looked smug, as though this was only something they had been expecting... And, she thought dully, they probably had.  
  
"Oh, Jesse," simpered Ms. Smith. Of course she would, each of these girls were worth their weight in gold, never mind her job. "You must have caught something out there! Vashti, why don't you go run down to the lobby to see what they have for the flu. Natasha, you go run Jesse a bath, and Veronica, you go find her some clean clothes..." If she hadn't been so upset, Jesse would have laughed at how frantic Ms. Smith sounded. Vashti immediately took off. She wasn't so bad, Jesse suspected that she might actually talk to her if the other girls didn't stop her. After a calculated pause, Natasha and Veronica chorused "Yes, Ms. Smith!" and ambled off. They were the ringleaders of the anti-Jesse campaign.  
  
The next morning, after a horrible night of remembering what she had seen and listening to the others whisper about her, she boarded her parent's private jet for home. She didn't tell them what had occurred, and their puzzled Doctor was forced to conclude that her shock symptoms were from her phantom disease. 


	2. BastetMau

Russian Mafia HQ, two weeks later.  
  
"Sir, there was a girl..."  
  
"Silence, you idiot! I know all this already! How could you have been so careless?! My god... I'm astonished. If you hadn't served me so well in the past... I want this fixed yesterday. Go!"  
  
"Yes sir." The terrified man, who's name was Petrovitch, called his subordinate in. "I want an assassin, here, in this room, now."  
  
"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm afraid that's not possible..." He quailed under Petrovitch's glare.  
  
"Not possible! You dare come in here and say that what I ask is not possible!"  
  
"Well, Levski, Zograf and Volkov are on assignment, and won't be available for at least three months, and Popoff is on leave with her family. She can't be called in."  
  
"Go. Leave me." He knew what this meant. He would have to bring in an outsider for this job. With his own money, of course. There could be no question about that. He crossed his lavish suite, his expensive Italian shoes sinking into the heavy, wine coloured carpet. He turned on his computer, and went to a web site advertising shoe and furniture polish, a company called "Bigiros fine polish". Then, he did something that only seven other people on earth (who weren't part of the site) knew about. When he clicked the second 'I' in Bigiros, which was identical to all the other letters, he found himself in a completely different site, that wasn't exactly selling polish. He scrolled down the list of assassins, and muttered "Yes. Her. She will do."  
  
Russian Mafia HQ, 14 hours later  
  
Bastet-Mau, which roughly translates as "Devouring Lady-Cat," was nervous. She knew that there was no real reason for it, she knew how desperate the Mafia was for her services, that they wouldn't dare harm her for fear of retribution, yet she could not shake the anxiety she felt. Fortunately, no one would know from looking at her, except maybe Apoc... This was only her second assignment without him, her mentor, and she was still unused to not sensing him near her, hearing him. She shook herself, and brought herself back to reality. There was no use getting worked up for nothing.   
  
Still, despite the coolness of the waiting room, devoid of anything but the rigid metal chair she occupied, she was sweating through her skin-tight black shirt and kevlar vest. However, her relaxation training kicked in, and by the time a Mafia underling entered, she was composed, a model of assassindom. She silently took the information sheet and advance money he handed her, spun on her heel, and regally walked down the hall, her boot heels clicking on the bare cement floor. Only once she was back in her car, on her way back along the empty road from the Headquarters could Bastet-Mau allow herself to relax completely. She pulled out the information sheet and read:  
  
Target: Jesse Rheinhertz  
  
Age: 18  
  
Sex: F  
  
Hair colour: Red-gold (short)  
  
Eye colour: Blue-green  
  
Height: 5'7"   
  
Last known location: Crystal Woods Irish Boarding Academy.  
  
Wow, Bastet-Mau thought, that could have been me, if things had been different, if... No. She wouldn't think about that. What was done was done, and there was no use thinking of the past. It was strange, though... This Jesse girl matched Mau's own description exactly... It was almost like a sign, to her mind. But she shook that thought off, too. Apoc hated it when she thought like that. He would be pleased though, and she definitely was... 


	3. Death

Jesse, for all her preparation, buying guns, knives, a kevlar vest, was still caught unaware. She was asleep when Mau used her glass cutter to cut a hole in the window. Stupid child! Mau thought silently to her. Her room, because it was a Motel, was on the ground floor. A blind pig could have gotten in! Still, she crept silently through the room, using only the faint, ragged moonlight to guide her. Suddenly, her foot landed on a squeaky board. She jumped, cursed herself silently, and saw the figure in the bed sit up. She leapt to the girl's face, and smothered her scream. At least you did that right, damn you... The other girl, however, seemed able to fight. They wrestled, and fell off the bed. Mau snarled at her, and hissed, a strange habit of hers that assassin school hadn't gotten rid of. They rolled over to the door. This was an old, heavy wooden door, with a frame that stuck out about a foot, inside and out. Mau felt the other girl grab her head in one hand, her shoulders in another... Her last thought was No! How is this... CRACK!  
  
Jesse stood over the corpse, its neck broken. The other girl looked, if a little rougher and more scarred, identical to her. She stepped back, horrified. She knew that she had little time. She found herself going through the corpse's pockets, trying to think what to do. She found a card that said something about "revenge coming on swift wings to whosoever kills the bearer of this..." At first Jesse felt hopeless after reading this, there was no escape. Then... They looked enough alike, it just might work. Quickly now, she stripped the corpse, put her own clothes on it, and put the other clothes on herself. Next, she turned the card over. Bastet-Mau, that must be her name. My name. This is the only way. There was a cell phone among the corpse's belongings, with a button marked "home". Well, she could just as well die there, wherever it was, as here. She pressed the button. A woman's voice answered, a mechanical one. DNA scan, pending... Complete. Welcome, Bastet-Mau. What? Thought Jesse. How could we have the same DNA? Oh well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth... A real woman's voice spoke now.   
  
"Mau? Oh, thank god, you're alive! Apoc is frantic, I'm surprised he hasn't given himself a heart attack! How could you?! Oh well, he'll want to hear from you, I'll put you through to him..." A man's voice now, and it did indeed sound frantic.  
  
"Oh, Mau! How could you do this? What have I told you, time and again?! Dammit! Ok, look, where are you? I'll come pick you up, I'm on my way. Bloody hell... Oh well, you're alive, that's what matters."  
  
"I'm, uh, at a motel. But don't come here!" If he saw the corpse... Wait. She didn't know anything... She needed an excuse... "I, er, got knocked on the head. I-I'm having a little trouble remembering..." Good.  
  
"Careless, but fine, whatever. And Mau, lose the accent!"  
  
Oops. The real Mau had no accent, apparently. Fortunately, she could drop it if she needed to. "Okay. There's an airfield sort of thing near here. Meet me there."  
  
"Got it. I'll be there in twenty minutes. Whatever you do, don't let yourself sleep!"  
  
Jesse didn't think she could sleep, but she told the man she wouldn't. She walked to the field, and waited. 


	4. Rebirth

Jesse heard the plane a long time before she saw it, because the night was cloudy. Finally she saw its belly lights, and it landed. She tried to hide her terror, breathing deeply as her personal trainer had taught her. A ramp detached from the plane and extended towards her. Through the light flooding out of the plane, she could just see the silhouette of a man exiting the ramp. He moved like a predator, she thought. He left the plane slowly, as if he expected an ambush.   
  
"Hel-" As she started to reach for his hand, he grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. She shrieked as he expertly knotted the cord around her wrists. After she had been bound, she felt a gun being place against her head.  
  
"Now, I want to know exactly what happened to my apprentice." He growled in her ear.   
  
She gathered up courage she hadn't known she had, and said, coolly, "Have you gone mad or something? Don't you recognize me?" This could go well for her, or very, very badly, and get her killed. At this point, though, she was so petrified that she didn't especially care. The man spun her around again, and this time shoved her to the ground. She landed hard, and had her breath knocked out.   
  
He knelt in front of her and said "You know as well as I do that you're not Bastet-Mau. You're far younger than her, and she would never have allowed her calls to be traced. You didn't even know I was doing that, did you?" He looked away. "She was my apprentice. She was like family. And now you get to pay for her life." He pointed the gun at her again.  
  
Jesse knew she should be afraid, but instead she felt only anger. She was not going to die like this. She was not going to put up with this creepy man's crap. Her foot lashed out, and she felt it connect with his gun. He didn't drop it, but it was knocked away from her. She expected him to yell or jump away in surprise, but instead he leaped forward and knocked her back, pinning her under his superior strength and weight. As he started to choke off her air supply, he suddenly seemed to think better of it and stood up. He looked down at her, trying to fill her lungs, and said,  
  
"I won't kill you, not yet, not if you tell me how you managed to kill a trained assassin and then hack into her database."  
  
She thought a moment. "I didn't mean to kill her! It was an accident. She came in through the window while I was asleep, and I wouldn't even have known she was there until it was too late." She shuddered slightly. "But she stepped on a creaky covered my mouth so I couldn't scream. We wrestled around for a while, and fell off the bed. The door was weird there, the frame stuck out a lot, and we rolled over there. I had her head in one hand, and her shoulders in the other, trying to keep her from biting..." The man laughed softly, in spite of himself. "...And..." She broke off, remembering the horrible crack that had followed, and the body under her going limp. "And what's this about hacking? I didn't hack anything." The man looked sharply at her.  
  
"You didn't? Then how did you get into Mau's phone?"  
  
"There was a weird voice that said something about DNA tracing, and I thought 'Uh oh, that's that plan gone', but then it said that I had access, and called me Bastet-Mau."   
  
The man was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. He looked back at her.  
  
"Come on. I'm going to take you back to the Complex, but I'm going to need something to call you other than 'girl'."  
  
"My name's Jesse. Jesse Rheinhertz. Call me Jess. No one does." She sighed. "What should I call you?" She said, cheekily.  
  
"I'm Apoc. Once we're back at the Complex, you're going to need to meet a few people. Namely my, er, partner... and the doctor. He may creep you out, but he won't actually hurt you without your consent, so you'll be Ok. Probably." He then extended his arm toward the ramp, and Jesse gave him a sidelong glance. She looked back at the country behind her, shook her head, and trotted resolutely up the ramp.   
  
The man, Apoc, followed her and thumbed it closed. He went up to the cockpit door and rapped on it, then he sat next to Jesse, saw the utterly confused look she was giving the arrangement of safety restraints, and began to reach over to help her. She hissed, bared her teeth at him, an utterly Mauesque expression, and figured it out herself.   
  
Once the jet was up in the air, Apoc started instructing Jesse in a few basic things she would need to know inside the Complex. Such as, how she should stay utterly silent around Dr. Caisson, he could probably turn anything she said into agreement to participate in an 'experiment'. And how, no matter what, she must look as if she had lived in the Complex for years. This meant that she would have seen countless lessons about properly concealing a body. Or random, unplanned sparring (fondly known as 'hallway sparring' by the student body). Apoc also taught her how to properly turn down a hallway sparring match. And, above all, he said, she must keep up the pretense of amnesia for her own safety at all times.  
  
She listened patiently through all this, regarding Apoc evenly. She took it all in carefully. She thought all this stuff sounded rather-disturbing-to say the least, but it was too late to go back now. Why is he keeping me alive? She wondered. There's no reason for it... She snapped her attention back to what he was saying, and the plane flew on. 


	5. Complexities

@Kyrillia: Sorry, probably no Twins in this Fic... Awwwww!  
  
@Hyperactive Hamster of Doom: Oh, don't worry... I will!  
  
Dear, dear readers: Today is the 12th, and tomorrow I am leaving to go to Camp for a week. My first ever genuine Summer Camp. Wish me luck! Anyway, this means no updates, sorry!  
  
***  
  
About four hours later the jet landed at the Metropolis International Airport. Almost as soon as Apoc radioed, they were cleared for landing, even before planes that were already there. Jesse was amazed how much power the Complex seemed to wield.   
  
Once inside the airport Apoc told a nearby pilot to put the jet in its hangar and to get his car. Both these demands were met promptly and without question or complaint. By the time they arrived at the airport's entrance, Apoc's ultra-light BMW awaited them. Apoc went round to the driver's side and got in. Jesse hesitated a moment, then got into the seat beside him. Apoc took a very circuitous route back to the empty warehouse over the entrance to one of the Complex's underground parkades.  
  
Once there, Apoc parked in his usual spot and Jesse got out while trying to look around and received a bump on the back of her head for her effort. Apoc chuckled quietly and led her to the door to the Complex proper. He thumbed the door button and stepped through, holding it open for her. She stepped through and looked around. Some of the people in the halls saw Apoc and nodded to him deferentially, and he returned the nods. Apoc lead her down one of the halls, but about twenty paces from the parkade a man slunk up to them.  
  
"Hey, Apoc, you're back! Kelaran will want to know. And Shadow wants you to come see her as soon as possible. Hey, Bastet." He said, with a small wave at Jesse.  
  
"Umm, hi." She said returning the wave. The man gave her an odd look, but continued along the hall in the direction he'd been going. Once he was around the corner and out of sight Apoc leaned over to Jesse and whispered  
  
"Good job. That was Slink. You could probably tell why he's called that."   
  
"Yeah." She replied, not really listening. They continued along the hall, with many twists and turns and finally reached what Jesse was sure must be Apoc's room. He opened the door and nudged Jesse in. The door shut behind them with a pneumatic hiss, and Apoc let out a deep breath. Jesse sat on the bed and looked around.  
  
"You live with someone, don't you?" she asked suspiciously, crossing her arms. Apoc nodded. Just then, the door opened again and Jesse tensed, but Apoc turned to greet the woman standing at the entrance.  
  
"You're safe!" she breathed as she flung her arms around his neck and he grasped her tightly around the waist. Jesse recognized the voice as the woman on the cell phone. She watched them share a very long and satisfying kiss, until she finally interrupted with a sarcastic, "Please, get a room!"   
  
Apoc and the woman broke apart and Apoc turned to look at her. Apoc laughed as the woman stated "This is our room!" Jesse just shook her head.  
  
"You found Mau then?" The woman asked.  
  
"Well..." said Apoc, "not exactly... Kelaran, meet Jesse." The woman, Keleran, got a slightly confused look. She thought a few seconds, but she was quick to understand and she gasped.  
  
"Mau is...?" Apoc nodded and Kelaran's eyes filled with tears. Apoc pulled her back into his arms and Jesse stared at the floor. Was she ever going to escape the reprecussions of almost being killed? Kelaran allowed herself a few moments of grief, then straightened up. She dried her eyes with the sleeve of her dark green tunic.   
  
"Then this is?" she asked coldly, gesturing at Jesse, still managing to look intimidating with red-rimmed eyes. Jesse flinched.   
  
"This is Jesse, a girl Mau was contracted to kill because the Russian Mafia botched a job and let her see them. Mau was too confident and underestimated her prey and got her neck broken. Jesse thumbed Mau's phone." When Kelaran heard this she shot a look at Apoc that Jesse didn't comprehend. Apoc nodded slightly. Then she abruptly changed the subject by saying,  
  
"Shadow wants to see you. You better go." Apoc nodded and left. As he was leaving her alone with this creepy woman, she asked, "Who's Shadow?" He smiled, but didn't answer her. She watched him hurry away down the hall. 


End file.
